


horizonless

by tomatocages (kittu9)



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Bargaining, F/M, Fate, Magic, Season/Series 02, Spells & Enchantments, Time Travel, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 16:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/700117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittu9/pseuds/tomatocages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like everyone else, Zatanna is waiting for something. Because she is not like everyone else, she has time on her side. </p><p>(In which Zatanna and Dick have a history.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	horizonless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [empressearwig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressearwig/gifts).



> _you are_  
>  a concordance of person, number, voice,  
> and place
> 
>  
> 
>  _You, Therefore_ by Reginald Shepherd
> 
> I am really, really behind on the second series. And this is for empressearwig's perennial request for Dick and Zatanna to have a history of trading sex for spells (or other emotional needs).

Like everyone else, Zatanna is waiting for something. Because she is not like everyone else, she has time on her side. 

Despite all the magic that Fate has at hand, supernatural forces aren't enough to keep her father's body from aging out of usefulness, and Zatanna has every intent of outliving her father's time as a vessel. It won't even be terribly difficult, so long as she avoids actually dying: magic will keep the years long for her, and mostly they're boring. Occasionally, there are stretches of frantic activity, or moments in which Dick suggests that they play a game. The latter is her favorite, even if it has lately taken on a note of desperation; she does miss the easy humor of it, the way they once were children playing pretend. 

Zatanna has been making out with Dick since they were both teenagers; she forgets, sometimes, that they are still teenagers. She has always liked this: the feel of his mouth under hers, the way certain muscles slack and others twitch, the uncomplicated way it shortens and blanks out the passage of time. Her internal clock settles; she does not think about her father. She thinks about her body, and Dick's body, and all the ways in which they match each other. And sometimes, she stops thinking: she feels dizzy and flushed and intent. 

Zatanna is never sure what Dick is getting out of the arrangement, because for years it happened solely on her terms. She used to look for him in corners too small to possibly fit an actual person, and whenever she found him, she'd reward herself. After a while, things escalated: she was angry and a little frantic, he was eager and a little desperate. Zatanna discovered, then, what time had done to their bodies, discovered the ways in which they could fit themselves together.

It surprised him, she thought, which was funny because Dick was himself a surprise and pretended to be unflappable. But after they unpeeled each other’s layers, he rolled over and slurred, “I've been here the whole time.” He was sated and baffled. She always baffled him, and she was proud of it.

“That is exactly what a discovery is,” Zatanna tells him. For instance: she has always flushed easily, but Dick has discovered that the color continues down her neck and across her chest. That discovery belongs to him: it is a gift, unexpected, unreturnable.

She thinks that—the combination of history and desire—might be why she lets him ask for favors that she really should question. But it’s almost like a game, when nothing at all is a game anymore, and when she hasn’t been a child since her father put that damn helmet on, so she lets him seduce her. In return, she tells him secrets in words he’ll never understand. 

The spells are usually easy, usually discreet, usually quiet: and because she feels a little like she owes him, for all the time she has blanked and endured by using his body, she doesn't ask questions and she doesn't make him cover his ears when she casts her spells. Zatanna lives in a world of grays, despite the oaths she's taken and the oaths she's planning to take: and she's not sure how morality mixes in with a teenager's sense of vigilante justice. It's something Dick, oddly, will never understand, or at least will not understand for years to come. It's why she has no reticence about licking her fingers and tracing spells over his skin when he's unaware: _efas mih ekam, mih nraw_. 

Zatanna is ruthless with her love, and selfish. She always has been, and the business with Fate had only made her more so. While it's not always clear what she has manufactured with Dick, it's notable that whatever else she is with him, she is also always herself. Zatanna thinks sometimes that she is only ever herself when she’s fucking Dick; it’s certainly one of the only times she doesn’t hold herself back. 

It is a sure way to harm them both. Zatanna can taste it in his sweat, she can see it in the spells she casts for him. Fairly soon, he will do something unforgivable; she’s not sure if that matters, as Zatanna never forgives herself. 

They are getting older. Zatanna is not sure, but this might be the only game left for her and Dick to play, one where she pretends to move along but really just sits and waits and waits.


End file.
